And how other perfectionist travelers can avoid doing the same.
Swiping right has its benefits.
Travel + Leisurereaders agree: Ann Arbor is one of the country’s best cities for singles.
In the annual America's Favorite Places survey, readers of all stripes evaluate hundreds of cities and towns across a range of categories, from the friendliness of the locals to the quality of the pizza. Unlike Travel + Leisure's World's Best Awards, which encourages readers to weigh in on travel experiences across the globe, the America's Favorite Places survey is a way for locals to share what their hometowns do best.
Related:The 2017 America's Favorite Places Survey
“People in Ann Arbor are more willing to engage in intimate and genuine conversations, whether they know you well or if you’ve just met,” said James Bee.
Born, raised, and educated in the Michigan city, Bee touts its open atmosphere as pivotal to fostering relationships. He met a past girlfriend in Chinese class, another friend met her fiancé in a local cafe, and one of his professors met his wife playing in the same co-ed soccer league. “Ann Arbor supports a wide range of interests, so it’s a great place to find the right people, whether that means friends, language partners, or dates.”
Which other cities do T+L readers recommend for singletons? One theme across many of the top scoring destinations is, unsurprisingly, an active bar scene — helpful for making friends as well as meeting a potential suitor.
Read on for the full list of America’s favorite cities for singles, including the number one city where they're ready to mingle. And be sure to cast your vote in this year's America's Favorite Places survey.
Here are the spots where you're most likely to meet other people who are traveling alone.
Outfitters both emerging and established are catering to female adventurers looking for excitement, wellness, and social engagement — without the guys around.
For many people, the world feels like a much more dangerous place now than it was a few decades ago. Information arrives more quickly, and through many more channels, and it’s hard to avoid noticing security alerts from so much of the world. But travel is hugely important for staying informed, understanding other people and other cultures and keeping fear at bay, and if there’s a middle ground — traveling while staying safe — we’re all for it.
In the World Economic Forum’s Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2017, countries are ranked according to their safety and security. The criteria to measure a country’s safety includes a handful of indicators, the index of terrorism incidence being perhaps the most obvious. For this, they used third-party data that looked at how many terrorist incidents occurred between 2010 and 2012, and how many fatalities and injuries happened in this same period.
All countries with a score in the top 95th percentile tied as having the lowest incidence of terrorism. The report also looked at the cost of terrorism on businesses, as well as the cost of crime and violence on business. Other indicators included the reliability of police services and the homicide rate.
The good news is that “safe” and “secure” don’t mean boring. Below are the 10 top-ranked countries for safety and security, and what to do and see in each of them.
Gone are the days of the Barbizon Hotel for Women. Or are they? Some hotel operators are beginning to target the needs and desires of solo female travelers with new room design, extra security features, and luxury bath products.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. After days of browsing destinations for a last-minute weekend trip, with flights in the $600s and hotels in the $300s glaring at me, I couldn’t really be seeing a one-way flight from Savannah, Georgia, back to New York City on JetBlue via Travelzoo for just $48.20. The “1 seat left at this price” alert toyed with me, and I couldn’t resist. Without thinking, I booked it.
I built an entire itinerary around that crazy deal—aiming to save money at every step without sacrificing safety or quality. My itinerary included a free walking tour around the historic district through Free Savannah Tours, a ghost tour for $19 (while others I saw were easily $30 to $45) by using a code on Ghost City Tours’ site, and a night at a 4-star oceanfront hotel for $99 at Westin’s Hilton Head Resort—with no additional resort fees, plus a free upgrade to a beach-view balcony room!
While solo travel may seem uneconomical since car rental, cab, and lodging bills aren’t split among fellow travelers, these tips and tricks can turn your trip for one into a money-saving journey.
Luxury travelers are increasingly heading for resorts on secluded, hard-to-reach peninsulas and islands to escape the world for a few weeks, perhaps for the illusion of safety in these turbulent times.
However, for more intrepid adventure types, getting off the beaten track means consulting maps, crunching data, and undertaking long and complex journeys to get to the ends of the Earth.
We've found 10 super-remote places, some hard to get to, others with bold and unusual geographic claims, but all offering a healthy dose of nowhere in particular.
There are a lot of reasons to travel alone. Perhaps you’re lucky enough to have more vacation days than any of your friends or family. Maybe you long to explore far-off countries (India! Morocco! Peru!) while your friends prefer to stay closer to home. Or many you just want to experience the joy of solo travel and the thrilling experience of being on no one’s agenda but your own. The idea of solo travel can be daunting, though, which is where tour groups come in. Traveling with a tour company can give individual travelers the freedom to explore on their own, choosing a destination and itinerary that works for your taste, while also providing the security and kinship of a group.
Ahead, our picks for the best tours to take when you embark on an adventure for one.
Amazing solo vacations to take before you tie the knot.
For the record, you don’t have to be looking for love (or sex, for that matter) in order to take advantage of Tinder.
The dating app’s year-old Passport feature — used by more than 1 million Tinder Plus subscribers — is especially useful for solo travelers eager to connect with locals. By dropping a pin on a map, people across the globe can “meet” residents before arriving in their destination.
Imagine a week, or even a month, prior to a trip, swiping right and getting to know locals with the same love of intimate wine bars or rowdy beer halls. Your match-made friends abroad can even help you pick up the local slang, avoid the overrated tourist traps, and tip you off to neighborhood events.
As many as 26 million matches are made every day on Tinder, so your chances of finding a companion is pretty high. And for solo travelers, this is a great way to ensure you’ll interact with plenty of locals.
In the past year, certain destinations have seen a huge boost in Tinder Passport activity. Ahead of the Olympics, interest in people from Rio de Janeiro has increased 10 percent. Swipes in Toronto have increased 44 percent, and the Indonesian island of Bali has seen interest grow by a whopping 60 percent.
The service is best for a fun day or two with locals, but hey, if you happen to meet your soul mate on vacation, that's pretty great too. So which destinations have had the most Tinder Passport activity? Reports say that if you’re headed to one of these 15 cities, you’ll have no trouble swiping right.
Redditors offered some great tips.
He says a solo trip here is “intimidating” and “thrilling.”
When I was a teenager, my family went on one of those bus tours of Europe, where we saw everything — we took 15-minute photo stops in front of landmarks from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to the Amsterdam Central Train Station. But now looking back, I realize we really saw nothing.
While monuments should dictate your itinerary in Europe, it’s really how you take in the sights that will make your trip. And with the sheer amount of things to see and do, traveling in Europe, especially with a big group, can get overwhelming. That’s why it’s one of the best continents to visit alone, where you can really see everything at your own pace.
Related: Hacks for Mastering Solo Travel
I’ve spent alone time in big metropolises like London and Paris; good-sized cities like Stockholm, Copenhagen, Berlin, Dusseldorf, and Vienna; and as smaller towns like Bergen. In each case, letting myself wander and getting lost led to some of the most memorable moments on the trip, like when I swapped cameras with other single travelers on the towering outdoor spire of Copenhagen’s Vor Frelsers Kirke, or when I relaxed in the pools of Stockholm’s historic Centralbadet bath house alongside locals of all ages. For more tips on how to meet people while traveling, click here.
When choosing your ideal destination, think about whether you’d prefer a large city with a simple public transportation system to help you cover more ground, or a smaller town that’s easy to explore on foot. Also consider whether you’re looking for an activity-filled city or one where you can kick back and relax. Watching your own back is always necessary, even in the most crime-free locations, but many European cities have safe reputations, so that you can focus more on where you go than how you go.
Taking in all those considerations, here’s a list of cities that are most welcoming to solo travelers — and where you can build your own ultimate Eurotrip.
What happens in Las Vegas, stays in New Mexico.
Solo travel may sound like a solitary experience, but the logistics of navigating foreign situations on your own naturally leads to meeting new people.
From accommodations and transportation to meals and entertainment, the opportunities to bond with other travelers or locals is built in, as long as you keep your ears piqued and your mind open. And that shared sense of searching for experiences often leads you to like-minded explorers on the same path.
After two days of hopping between city walking tours and day excursions in Ecuador, I remember thinking, “Gosh, I haven’t had any ‘me time.’” So I planned a spa day to the Termas de Papallactas hot springs to truly get some downtime—and of course ended up meeting the most lovely fellow tourists relaxing in the pools there too!
When I took a small group tour to Cuba in February, the itinerary seemed sparse, so I brought a blank notebook, with grand plans of filling it with my every thought. Instead, I found myself trying to squeeze in enough sleep because I hit it off so well with my fellow travelers that we were constantly going out for more Cuban rum nightcaps… and in one case, another single traveler staying in the same casa particulares and I ended up chatting for so long that we didn’t get to bed until after 3 a.m. Incidentally, I did eventually pull out my notebook on the last day of the trip… to pass around the van to get everyone’s e-mail addresses to keep in touch!
Related: Hacks for Mastering Solo Travel
The beauty of solo traveling isn’t just in where you leave your footsteps, it’s also in the friends and connections you collect along the path. Here are 18 ways to ensure you meet people along your road to self-discovery.